A Lifetime
by CrimsonObsession
Summary: An Invader Zim/Neil Gaiman's The Sandman crossover. Three guesses as to which Sandman character shows up, and the first two don't count. The measure of a lifetime...and how one ends.


I was reading the "Sandman: Book of Dreams" short story collection, and this popped into my head. Man I love The Sandman. If you haven't read Gaiman's comics, go read them now! More Zim torture...you always hurt the ones you love.  
  
I want to dedicate this to Idgiebay, one of the fandom's greatest authors and artists. You've got lots of friends, and we're all here for you!  
  
Disclaimer (Don'tcha love these?): Invader Zim and all related characters belong to the Almighty Thinnest Jhonen Vasquez and the beings of pure evil that inhabit the fotress of DOOM that is Nickelodeon. The Sandman and all related characters belong to the incomparable Neil Gaiman, lord of modern mythology!  
  
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A Lifetime  
  
(An Invader Zim/The Sandman Crossover)  
  
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"At the end of the procession, a bit behind everyone else, there were these two girls....The other one. The one at the end...I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I /knew/ her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'd still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go /with/ her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And she looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life." -Brant Tucker, The Sandman: World's End  
  
  
  
The pain was gone. Just like that. The agony that had rocked his body for hours disappeared. With each second that passed, it faded more from his memory.  
  
He sat up and looked around. Cold, sterile walls gleaming dully, glinting of metal. Medical instruments on shiny metal trays catching the spare light. Monitors, their faces glowing dull blue readouts.  
  
Something purple-red covered most of the instruments, thick and dripping slowly to pool on the tray beneath them. Large windows filled two opposite walls from waist height up; waist height for an average human, anyway. Footsteps sounded down the hall, and he cringed and shivered, an involutary reaction, then froze and waited for the sounds' maker to pass. He studied the room, then whispered to himself, "What is going on?"  
  
"You already know, don't you." The unfamiliar voice made him jump to the floor with a start, a small cry escaping his throat. He crouched defensively, then turned to find a woman standing beside and to the front of him. A human female; young, though he was still no judge of human age.  
  
"Who are you?" He was disgusted with the fear that slipped out in his tone.  
  
"You already know that, too, I imagine. Or you suspect, at least." And it was true. She felt familiar now, someone he knew, though he'd never seen her before. He would've remembered someone like her, despite his distaste for most of the human scum.  
  
Her skin was pale and smooth, pure white, like bleached bone. It contrasted starkly with the wild ebony hair that fell over her shoulders, the black shirt with thin straps and the black pants she wore; 'jeans' as he'd learned they were called. A silver chain dangled from her neck to rest just above the shirt's low neckline. From it hung a silver pendant, perpendicular bars with a loop at the top. On her face just below one of her dark, kohl-rimmed eyes, a black spiral curled against her skin. Even for a human she was beautiful, her presence soothing. "You're..."  
  
He wanted to place her, he knew who she was, somehow, but his mind wouldn't cooperate, didn't want to work straight. "Would this help?" she asked, voice kind and maybe amused, and then she was gone and an Irken stood in her place, a tall creature, dressed all in black, with long antennae, dark, almost black eyes, and pale skin with no hint of green. She smiled. And he knew.  
  
"So I'm..." he couldn't finish the thought. He fought against a sudden urge to look back at that table, to see what lay there, cold and probably as pale as the beautiful creature before him.  
  
"This can't be! I am Irken, a member of the greatest race in the universe! I can't have been defeated by those pathetic, sniveling worms!" He lashed out at a tray, and his hand only went through it. He stared at it for a moment, then sank to the floor.  
  
"I failed them. My Tallest. Myself."  
  
"You did what you could. That's all anyone can ask of another." She held out a slim-fingered hand, beckoning. He almost took it. Then someone came in.  
  
The boy was pale, with dark circles under eyes filled with stress. His usual trenchcoat was replaced with a lab coat, stained dark red. The door creeped shut behind him, and he stood there, staring into the lab, not seeing the two others present. His gaze was fixed on the table in the center, going right through the apparition sitting before it, and the one standing in front of him.  
  
"Come on, short stuff."  
  
"No. I must see this." He stood up, stepped to the side as the boy walked towards him and past him.  
  
The alien watched the human, both watched by the being that was neither. The alien almost turned away when the human reached the table, but forced his gaze back. The metal, and what lay on it, were both covered by a white sheet, the perfection marred by flowering splotches of dark red and purple. Only a small green hand was visible underneath, hung over the side.  
  
The alien waited, waited for the winner to declare his victory, for the taunts and gloating that his nemesis had won. But they didn't come. Only silence, and the still breathing of a single being.  
  
Then, the human moved. A thin hand on an even thinner wrist reached out from the fold of a sleeve. The movement was slow, weak but deliberate, as the hand rose, and closed gently on the pale green fingers.  
  
And the human spoke, in a voice little more than a whisper itself, like the minute sound the coat fabric had made rubbing against his skin.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
Then he was gone, pushing quickly out the door, leaving the alien with only the impression of unkempt onyx hair and moisture rolling down a pale cheek.  
  
The alien watched the door for a long time. The woman let him. When she knew he was ready, she reached out a hand, beckoning again.  
  
His eyes were blank as he stared at it for a moment. "What happens now?"  
  
"You're about to find out."  
  
Magenta eyes flicked back to the door. "Will I see him again?"  
  
"Do you want to?" Her voice was calm, amused. He thought for a moment more, then finally took her warm hand in his.  
  
"I wish I'd had more time."  
  
"You got what everybody gets. You got a lifetime." She smiled, and he had the feeling she'd said that before, many times, to many beings. "The question is, was it a good one."  
  
He thought of his people who had never accepted him, others who had openly despised him, and the one being who had looked on him as an equal.  
  
"I think it was." And they walked hand in hand, to where he belonged.  
  
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"You lived what anybody gets...You got a lifetime. No more. No less. You got a lifetime." -Death, of the Endless; The Sandman: Brief Lives  
  
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End file.
